Feb. 17…Qual. v. Quant.?
Comment on Pring’s take on the quant./qual. tension. Do his ideas conflict with most of what you’ve heard about the two approaches to research? Does he say anything surprising? Disturbing?
January 27…On Labaree’s Scholar-Practitioner Tension
Note something from this article with which you disagree (note: I assume that reading this paper was a different experience for those with P-12 experience and those without. That said, he made a sufficient number of bold claims so I’m sure everyone can disagree with something he said). Why do you disagree with it? Did Labaree give words to any tensions that you feel as you head down the road of the educational researcher? If so, explain.
Comment on Pring’s take on the quant./qual. tension. Do his ideas conflict with most of what you’ve heard about the two approaches to research? Does he say anything surprising? Disturbing?
ReplyDeleteI think Pring summarizes his ideas well when he states “In some respects, people are the ‘object of science,’ that is, of generalizations and causal explanations. In other respects, however, they escape such explanations through interpreting the world in their own personal ways” (p. 73). To be honest, I had a hard time understanding all of what I read in Chapter 5, and I was a little surprised by that summary statement. I was under the impression, based on my experience with Math Ed research (and some of our classroom conversations) that Educational Research would rely more heavily on qualitative research. I personally struggle with the ‘uniqueness fallacy’ in Chapter 4. I find myself quick to point out the reasons to NOT generalize due to the unique situations in each classroom.
I thought Pring made some great points about the interactions between qualitative and quantitative research, especially how the two types of research can complement one another in the education realm. Education includes elements of the physical world AND the personal/social world. If I am understanding the argument correctly, Pring draws attention to the ability to quantify certain aspects of education (the physical world stuff), while qualifying other aspects (the personal/social stuff) to help explain the quantitative measurements in context. I am surprised at the bottom line: we need both types of research in education, and that both types can bolster one another.
I am realizing that I have more of a history with qualitative research in education; I’m struggling to think of any quantitative studies that I have read that impacted my life as an educator. However, I am also realizing that in order to make a larger impact on education, the “facts” have to be there (not the ‘created’ facts, but the paradigm A type facts) to influence educational leaders/decision makers.
I was slightly disturbed by one point in this reading. Pring felt the need to point out that “those who emphasize the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research are right in demanding caution in the extension of quantification to certain aspects of personal and social reality…..” Um..DUH?! I find it disturbing that this needed to even be said. Of COURSE there are things about people and society that cannot be quantified. There are SO MANY THINGS in the classroom that cannot be observed/documented reliably, simply because the third party does not understand the dynamic of the interaction between the teacher and the student. But, as Pring eloquently stated, “there are features of what it is to be a person which enable generalizations to be made and ‘quantities’ to be added or subtracted” (p. 72). I just feel the need to add the phrase ‘with caution’ to the end of that sentence….
-Chelsea Prue
Yes, the point about "with caution" seems to be related to what I talk about below, in terms of "moderation." - Kori
DeleteKori Mosley
ReplyDelete2/16/2020
“Both and neither” (p. 45). Yep. Somehow this makes complete sense in my state of continual torpidity.
Prior to starting this program, I was told that art education research is moving in the quantitative direction (a seemingly contrary thing). I assumed it was because math “proves” things and art ed., devalued as it is, is desperate to prove its worth. This made complete sense to me, knowing art history and teaching about Polykleitos’ mathematical proportions being used to “prove beauty” as illustrated in his 5th century BCE sculptures…. But then, in Stats 608, I was enlightened to the “subjectivity of numbers.” That kind of math, it seems, can be made to look all sorts of ways - BOTH AND/OR NEITHER!!! I admit, I was REALLY bummed out. If I had to learn how to do that stuff, then at least I wanted to feel that the numbers were TRUTH. According to Pring, however, “truth” and “objectivity” are part of a “naïve realism” - more about negotiation and constructing of consensus than “actual things.” I suppose THAT is disturbing to me - but also, enlightening as I consider the misconceptions I have developed - and as I consider also what he calls “false dualisms.”
In blog post #1, I said, “I have always appreciated the concept of moderation, and so will look for opportunities to find the appropriate normative/epistemic balance, as Richardson suggested that Ph.D. degrees should do (p. 252 ).” So here we are again… On p. 51, Pring cites Campbell as saying, “There is a mistaken belief that quantitative measures replace qualitative knowledge. Instead, qualitative knowledge is absolutely essential as as prerequisite for quantification in any science. Without competence at the qualitative level, one’s computer print-out is misleading or meaningless” (p. 51). So… why do we have to choose? Or, perhaps, it seems that we NEED both, as Pring goes on to question the limited objectivity, reality, and truth that is actually available through qualitative methods…? This may also be a surprise to me - that the idea of generalizability is such a far reach with the qualitative methods he describes in Chapter 4 (specifically case study, p. 56).
Ultimately, I think I was pleasantly surprised by the moderation that I perceived in Pring’s summary. That both methods/paradigms have something to offer - that they ARE different but not necessarily in opposition (p. 72); “different methods get at different explanations” (p. 73). Makes sense to me - but I am sure that I am not really understanding everything he was talking about (that’s my truth).
So your contention that we need both is something that I have felt throughout my program. I often hear people say "oh I'm quantitative" or "oh I'm qualitative" and I have 1 faculty that is mixed methods. Why do we find the need to contrast and argue that one is more "hard science" than the other? I found chapter 4 to be really comprehensive and gave a nice overview of different types of research before jumping into qualitative and quantitative. I wonder if the dualism that exists goes back to the quadrant and us as ed researchers trying to legitimize our research by being quantitative or qualitative.
DeleteI don't think I've ever felt or perceived the epistemological "throw-down" between these approaches until I read these chapters...I think you might be right in that it speaks more to how ed researchers posture for external recognition than how they seek to do their own work. Which is disappointing in a completely human, non-philosophical way.
DeleteThe distinction Pring makes between quantitative and qualitative research and the false dualism actually validates often what I’ve heard of the two. Pring talks about quantitative research involving the physical world and qualitative research involving the personal and social experience.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found a little dense and tried to make meaning out of was the distinction between paradigm A and paradigm B. It seems like paradigm A includes objective reality, looking at repeated experimentation, and the world being what the research reflects. Paradigm B assumes that people exist in a world of ideas and these ideas are what constructs the world. It is not as concrete between researcher and researched, and meaning is negotiated. So then when we look back to quantitative and qualitative research, we need to consider this with what both are measuring and how they are measuring it and in what context.
I found the argument for rejecting the dualism to be pretty fascinating, because again this is something I’ve never thought of the reason for this distinction in the field, I’ve just known it existed. It seems like researchers can place more of a precedence on either quantitative or qualitative. This chapter is saying how really it isn’t an either or, but it is a frame of how you approach both.
-Aliza
Pring's ideas on the two approaches to research (quant/qual) line up with my understanding, and relate to the article critique that I've been working on. In my words, Quantitative research cannot take into account the raw human experience- in Pring's words "The result lies in a failure to recognize the peculiarities and complexity of the specific context." (pg 71)
ReplyDelete"Equally, the quantitative can be suggestive of differences to be explored in a more interpretive mode, as when the number of exclusions (quantitative research) provokes a more qualitative investigation of the reasons why." (pg 73) This is a direct reflection of my thoughts, and again, align with the article that I'm critiquing for class. In relation, I think of my job and how research has attempted to quantify student-athletes in order to figure out how to help them be as successful as possible. While research can come back and say that a student that has tutoring X amount of times and is in X number of study hall hours each week will produce the highest GPA, that misses out on SO many important (human) factors. I think that there has to be some sort of connection between the two research methods in order to reach as close to a full understanding as possible. In conclusion, I'll take Paradigm A's statistics and use Paradigm B to explore further in depth.
Hello, Maggie! I completely agree and just wrote something similarly. For me, the space between quantitative and qualitative, or the intersection of the two coming together create a deeper understanding of a particular phenomena. For me, yes the raw numbers are important, but I am particularly interested in the individual stories and experiences that make up the numbers. It is not always black and white, but it is important to reveal the black and white components and to then create an opportunity to peel back to onion to get to the core. The more I read, the more I am lean to mixed methodological approaches.
DeleteI saw Pring's chapters about quant and qual as being a way to ask us to be reflective about the context of the work we're studying, and how even in observing the process, we change it. (Gratuitous Built To Spill reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G5rIsmJUOeY ) The quote by Guba and Lincoln on page 62 explores the idea of "reality" in research, and how by evaluating something, we create this interactive space that includes us as evaluators, which removes objectivity because we're now part of the experimental observation.
ReplyDeleteThere's a lot here about objective and subjective reality, how our perception of the world creates questions about the nature of absolute truth. *tokes spliff* Truth is only quantifiable through human perception, man. *exhales* Is truth the outcome of consensus, as Paradigm B suggests, or is it something observable, time and again, under similar circumstances, as Paradigm A suggests? Why not both dot gif? https://media0.giphy.com/media/8rlhLU7iBYn72/giphy.gif
Education is so messy and complicated, that it feels like choosing one method over another leaves out part of the picture. Maybe I read Pring wrong, but I feel like he's saying, essentially, that educational research is swampy and murky, it's the process of educators trying to make sense of the world of teaching and learning, and if we're looking for absolute replicable hard-and-fast truths, they may not exist in this messy context.
The thing I'm taking from this is something I've been coming to terms with in my life lately, as a personal practice: finding a way to get comfortable with uncomfortable spaces. I'm using mindfulness to reach this headspace, saying to myself, "This feels uncomfortable, why am I feeling uncomfortable?" and then attempting to name my discomfort. Maybe in naming our research discomfort, we're able to take a step back, look at the context, and develop a more holistic view of the system as a whole. Include the perspective of the lens in which we're looking at the thing, include the experience of the researcher and of the participants as part of it, too. And come to terms with the idea that maybe the system of educational research as a whole is messy and complicated. There probably are very few absolutes in ed research, right? Learning is complicated, and inherently contextual. If learning were easy, nobody would ever drop out of school, right? It would just be **wave a magic wand** learned!
(I hate that none of my links work, *Nikita Khrushchev slamming shoe on podium dot gif*)
DeleteCaitlin, just got a hoot out of reading your post! It resonates with me because I, too, find myself in uncomfortable spaces and am working on accepting that. I thought that entering a PhD program might "magically" give me the answers to the questions that have burning in my mind for years about making schools equitable... now that I'm hear and I'm having those conversations with other students and professors, it's pretty clear how uncertain the answers to those questions are and how deeply someone's answer is shaped by their experiences, opinions, research methods, etc. Let's all bring our qual/quant/mixed methods data to the table, share our collective knowledge, and make a plan together.
DeleteWell for starters, maybe it's the time of the semester for my brain to slow down, but I felt like I needed to introduce Pring to Becker to get his writing style a little more clear. I understand the dichotomy Pring was calling to attention, and most of his descriptive analysis was getting through. But it was his convoluted path to the conclusion that threw me off the trail.
ReplyDeleteSo, after all of that breadcrumb-following...if I'm reading this right, Pring spent fourteen pages building up to the conclusion: "neither one of you is completely right, and you actually need each other to make sense." Quantitative research is "naive" in assuming it can measure an objective truth, and qualitative research is naive in that it believes its findings can generalize beyond the specific context in which they were constructed. By his own account, the qualitative paradigm is needed to make quantitative research meaningful (place "objective" findings in the context of the observer). But if that is the case, then where do you draw the line between the strengths of each paradigm and the flaws? If qualitative research informs quantitative measures, then is it possible to generalize across contexts at all? Who gets to define what aspects of the context for qualitative study are meaningful enough to be limiting? If I study kids in a classroom, does that mean all other classrooms are inadequate for applying my findings? Do I have to pick a similar neighborhood, a similar socioeconomic distribution, a similar racial breakdown of students, or some other unknown combination of factors to even consider translating what I've learned?
Overall, I get stuck on the time spent between describing and teasing apart the "either or" that the "both/and" messaging is a little lost on me.
Beth, love your description of breadcrumb following to Pring's conclusion - I'm with you there! Bottom line seems to be that neither is good enough alone and one can't exist without the other.
DeletePring’s take on the quantitative and qualitative tension aligns with a lot of the perceived tension that I see. While Pring articulates this tension in a much more formal manner, he makes it clear that there are two dividing views of research, but it does not have to be either or. Both quantitative and qualitative have their benefits and their constraints, but to completely rule either out is a disservice to research best practices. For me, it feels like two political parties, Republiican and Democratic. Some make decisions simply based off of their political affiliation and will simply disregard the other due to their affiliation. We limit ourselves because of this narrow view and the false dualism that has been created. The space of ‘truth’ and ‘objectivity’ creates and further divides the quantitative and qualitative divide. I do believe that objectivity is important, especially to take a snapshot of one concentrated space/variable/phenomena in time, but it is equally important to understand the unique and individual experiences that make up the collective. Pring highlights the work of Campbell (1999) that resonated with me when he quoted:
ReplyDeleteThere is a mistaken belief that quantitative measures replace qualitative knowledge. Instead qualitative knowledge is absolutely essential as a prerequisite for quantification in any science. Without competence at the qualitative level, one’s computer print-out is misleading or meaningless (Campbell, 1999, p. 141).
Many of my previous research has come from a critical race theoretical lens, so I certainly have a tendency to want to understand the experiences that reflect the objective nature of the numbers but sometimes to start the conversation we have demonstrate the initial or immediate need.
I read these chapters, closed the book, and thought: “Well, I think I understood half of that.” I didn’t think that the arguments or comments he made were that scandalous until you asked if anything was DISTURBING. Now I’m concerned that I wasn’t properly reacting to some potentially troubling ideas! Or, more likely, I didn’t fully UNDERSTAND the troubling ideas he was talking about.
ReplyDeleteNote: You can strike all of this with a big asterisk because I am FULLY accepting that I will show up in class tomorrow and realize that I may have been interpreting this all wrong.
Being in an early stage in my PhD program, attending a counseling based (research light) Masters’ program, and serving on the administrative side of education may have impacted my understanding of the tension between Qual and Quant. I never saw anyone get into a screaming match over the nature of truth or a heater bar close argument about whether or not the human person could be quantified in research. If there is a stark divide that exists, trying to find a middle ground seems like a reasonable enough goal. The idea that we collectively work through our constructions of the world to find what is most sophisticated or most informed seems to feel right to me on a gut level. Surrounding that, the concept that there is SOME kind of firm “objective” ground existing outside of us in the natural world which allows us to make comparisons has merit as well. It jives with my overall sense of the world that it’s more convincing to say: “We can say with a great deal of confidence what 10 grams of hydrogen will do under these conditions” than “We can say with a great deal of confidence what the best ways to educate trans* youth are in elementary schools.”
The quote on p. 73 felt like a good summary: “Qualitative knowledge is the building block of quantitative knowing … It is the only route to knowledge, noisy, fallible, and biased thought it may be.” This to me is reassuring about the value of a PhD. If the route to knowledge involves getting things wrong, we have nothing to fear! So we learn how to think, how to write, how to challenge, how to reflect, and how to edit. And we rely on our peers and colleagues to do the same in good faith to our work to get closer to what feels like the most sophisticate form of the idea. I can’t find myself getting too worked up over a Quant vs. Qual rift (if it exists), and I’m excited to find out if that makes me enlightened or childish!
I remember not so long ago sitting around in historical research methods seminars, sniggering at the social sciences pretensions to universality. As the discipline arguably most closely engaged with the study of people, it seemed rather obvious to us that the search for the "rules" governing human behavior was misguided. We preferred the particular and the descriptive.
ReplyDeleteOf course, history does not seek to make any sort of intervention into the present (except perhaps to explain the roots thereof). I think this is one of the ways in which it gets to safely step away from generalizations and universal categories. But -- as we know -- education is a discipline built around using the knowledge generated in order to improve practice. For that reason, the stakes are very high. There's a moral demand to get it right! And I agree with that.
So, in examining the relative dualism between quantitative and qualitative knowledge, I am personally comforted by the pragmatist approach that has come up in class, and which came up in Pring on page 70, when he said, "How we describe reality depends very much on the purpose of the description." I think good research is guided by the questions we ask, and rather than artificially forcing our questions into a prescribed method, we should build our methodologies around what we are trying to find out.
Caveat emptor: I say this as someone who is pretty sure that my research methods will be qualitative. And I sense that a preference for the qualitative also makes the researcher more open to the creative use of research designs. I cannot really speak for quantitative researchers.
So, I'm heartened by Pring's conclusion that both approaches are useful and appropriate for particular situations. But also I feel like I didn't need to be convinced?
Jonathan
Pring's take on quantitative vs. qualitative is deeply rooted in the underlying philosophies of both methods. For me, this was clearest when he introduced Paradigm A and Paradigm B. Paradigm A's premises rely on concrete observations, "truths", and repeated experimentation - clearly the quantitative side. Whereas Paradigm B's premises rely on the interaction of ideas, unique to the individual having them, communication, and context - qualitative for the purposes of our argument.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading these descriptions, I stopped before moving on to reflect on which one I identify more strongly with. For the record, as a "researcher" (that feels weird to say), I aim to employ a mixed-methods approach to my own research. However, when reading through the paradigm premises.. I feel a strong pull towards Paradigm B. I think context, personal experience, and opinion deeply shape our beliefs as individuals. I've seen many arguments where one party throws CONCRETE evidence in another's face for them only to explain it way - which seems to directly refute Paradigm A's premise that there is absolute truth... or maybe, there is but we people are just failing to see past our own circumstances and therefore cannot reach it and be enlightened. Wow, apologies.. this is why I don't usually go down into the rabbit hole of philosophical wonderings.
But anyways, back to Pring. Pring states that we can reject one of these paradigms without completely embracing the other. So in summary, there are elements of both that work and its the hybrid form of the two that really constitutes our work.... I think I'm thrown because at some point in time, people must have taken sides and believed in either/or but now, is it common belief that they work together? Or are people still firmly grounded in their sides? Are we, as education researchers, uniquely enlightened because our work is so "murky" (as Caitlin said) so we've had to find a middle ground?
Dear Sarah, welcome to the philosophical rabbit hole. We're all quite mad here. (Was that the Cheshire Cat or the Mad Hatter? I guess it doesn't matter very much.)
DeletePring does a good job of clearly articulating the different methods and reasoning behind quant and qual, and I think, considered on their own, they are pretty straightforward too. One seeks to identify data driven, repeated experimentation (reproducible results even) and the other acknowledges the need to explore things through a more narratively complex, human and emotional lens.
ReplyDeleteLife is full of unexplained stuff, and I've always been a little suspicious of people that feel so confident in what they know. I find inspiration in mysteries.
In qual, our participants' stories seem to matter more, and so as a storyteller, personally I'm drawn to this. But I also like to find firm footings in my worlds; I like to have confidence in my settings, and so I see a benefit, a need even, to rely on quant.
Ever since taking my first research methods course, it's seemed obvious that relying on a mixed methods approach is best. But I've made that determination in the context of my own areas of interests. My thinking on this clearly doesn't work for everybody. It depends on the world in which we study.
So a lot of this brings me back to what we've been discussing since day one, as far as context, what we mean when we say "scientific," and hard versus soft.
- Peyton B.
While I think it's fair to assume there are still very real tensions in academia, much of the 'paradigm' camps for methodology seem to be a preference rather than a strict reflection of
ReplyDeletehow we interpret reality. This is completely anecdotal, but on our team at work (in med ed research), qualitative research is seen as burdensome because of the time and resources needed. It has little to do with how knowledge is generated, maybe because both quant and qual are accepted as common practice. In my experience, qualitative researchers strive to be as "rigorous" as possible to avoid the assumption that their findings and conclusions are based solely on a gut feeling or personal perception, and this rigor is what led to it being more or less "accepted" as of the late 20th century. I think in both of these very broad approaches (which says nothing of the most misunderstood of research endeavors, the mixed-methods approach), there are elements of the objective and subjective, at least in social sciences. Whether or not that's purely a reflection of epistemology depends on the discipline and beyond that, the research question, and beyond that, the researcher. A strong researcher is one who uses the best possible method to answer their research question (sorry, I'm maybe leaning to heavily on lesson learned in methods courses).
My understanding of positivism has always been a strict definition that sense perceptions are the only valid source of knowledge. Beyond that, Comte believed that the social experience was measurable, and he believed that this measurement could be done in a purely objective way. In Sociology, we see the dual approach introduced years later from C Wright Mills, who argued for the subjective, because without subjective understanding, we won't be able to understand anything social objectively. I think Pring touches on the fact that the objective and subject can't be totally detangled, and the Campbell quote points at the two being dependent. We need the quIalitative to help define and frame the quantitative, and we can assume the opposite.
I don't know that they're a false dualism, in terms of what each methods hopes to achieve. There are research endeavors for which quantitative methods are far more complementary, and the same could be said of qualitative. It could point to a philosophical or sociological framework or ideology, and certainly certain methods are preferable to certain paradigms (but I learned in eval methods that even post-positivists are flexible enough to 'allow' for qualitative methods), but I agree with Pring that the nature of the dualism he explains is a false one. They are different beasts, but at the end of the day, I have to be the person who says that quantitative being more "scientific" is, in and of itself, a social construction. We as a society, as other societies did long before us, have collectively granted it superiority. But as Pring points out, social constructions are always changing.
- Meagan
PS. Sorry to be later and sorry for the disconnected thoughts--my brain is not quite running on all cylinders but I look forward to a class discussion on this topic!
As one who believes that a mixed methods approach to educational research yields the most meaning results to effect change, I had several reactions to Pring's discussion of the tension between quantitative and qualitative research. While his ideas reflect much of what I have heard about the two approaches to research, I felt that his bulleted description of the premises of the qualitative paradigm was a bit extreme, leading me to initially question whether he wrote with a bias towards the quantitative approach. As I continued reading, I was honestly confused by his back-and-forth. I kept asking, "What is his point?" The ah-ha moment came on pg. 71, where he says (in talking about quantitative research findings being used by political leaders to "manage" schools) that "ignoring the complex transactions which take place between teacher and learner and which cannot be captured in the 'management and means/end' language of that research, distorts those educational transactions, and disempowers' and disenfranchises' the teachers." Pring's summary argument that opposition between qualitative and quantitative approaches to research is "mistaken" aligns with my belief that the two do not have to compete; rather, they compliment each other. Quantitative research answers the question of WHAT and qualitative research investigates the WHY behind the WHAT.
ReplyDelete“It is important to explore this divide further and to show why that which is quite acceptable at the everyday commonsense level is to be declared unacceptable by researchers (p. 61).” To me this statement sums up the divide between qualitative and quantitative researchers. Both qualitative and quantitative research methods can be effective. Using qualitative data can help make sense of quantitative inquiry. The same can be said the other way around. I tend to agree with Pring’s way of thinking with regard to understanding that “there are different ways in which reality is conceived” (p.68). For this reason, both qualitative and quantitative research has relevance and can serve as a check and balance. Quantitative research absent of context can be dangerous if being used to make widespread decisions. There has be a consideration of human dynamics and all possible realities that make up social constructs. It seems as if Pring is in favor of the importance of both methods.
ReplyDelete